hey everyone..

im trying hard to get dma activated on my sata drive..i dont need raid(and cant have it..only one sata drive ...but hdparm -tT shows slower performance on the sata drive

/dev/sda = sata
/dev/hda = pata

/dev/sda


hdparm -Tt /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 1008 MB in 2.01 seconds = 502.32 MB/sec
HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(null) (wait for flush complete) failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
Timing buffered disk reads: 58 MB in 3.05 seconds = 19.04 MB/sec
HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(null) (wait for flush complete) failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device


hdparm /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
IO_support = 0 (default 16-bit)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 256 (on)
geometry = 24321/255/63, sectors = 390721968, start = 0

hdparm -i /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
HDIO_GET_IDENTITY failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
the results for the pata drive are

/dev/hda

hdparm -Tt /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
Timing cached reads: 996 MB in 2.00 seconds = 497.58 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 120 MB in 3.00 seconds = 39.97 MB/sec


im able to enable dma/set Xfer mode/IO/ only in the pata drive, not in the sata drive..in kernel config ive enabled "scsi low-level->sata support->silicon image sata support" and also enabled "silicon image chipset support under ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support"

im right now using sata as root and the drive is stable..just need dma..thanks in advance

ganja_guru,

Do you get this error when using hdparm to set the DMA:

HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(setxfermode) failed: Operation not supported

I am a newbee, so I cannot help much

You might want to look at "my thread"
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=290393

- for some inspiration
- see if your hard-drive is black-listed (might not be relevant thought)

You may want to tell us if sata_sil is loaded,
what version it is (and what version of bios your sil card runs),
and what is your kernel version

I am afraid I will not be able to help much more, but by putting
this information together somebody might come up with
something

/dev/sda:
setting xfermode to 66 (UltraDMA mode2)
HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(setxfermode) failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device


anyway follow up here..this guy may be on to something..its a thread i started in the arch linux forums..

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.p...d1017bd3a1488f

oh yeah..and its a SiL3112A Version 4.2.7...and even better news, i think my hard drive is blacklisted cause people have had problems enabling dma on this seagate 200GB..

Sorry to hear that; I cannot help more at this stage.
At least we have identified what is going on.
(No fix that I know about). The driver might be beta, but it
actually works quite well (at least on my PC).
If you edit sata_sil.c you should see near the top a list
of blacklisted HDs.
Please let us know if you manage to make some progress

Regards

PS: If I remember well, there are quite a few post around
about this black-listing business and sata; I have ignored
them because the brand of HDs affected was not the one I use.
There might some other posts around on the same subject
with smaller HDs then.

thanks for the help man...anyway, for what its worth, im going to try changing my damn controller..do u know of any sata controller with good linux support?

Top of my head, cannot remember, but certainly read a lot about
that at the time I was building my PC.
I will post if I can remember or find what I gathered

As starting point I have the same suggestion as what bbs
suggested to you already aka
http://linux.yyz.us/sata/sata-status.html

Do you want to invest in a sata raid card while you are at it?
It may make sense, depending on your usage.
I cannot recommend one; I just remember that some sata raid
are hardware raid, and one of this card seemed really well
suited for linux. Which one I cannot remember for now.

I thought I had read about seagate and sil somewhere:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=223822

no. no point in a sata raid card cause i have only one sata hard disk as of now..im going to try commenting out the seagate blacklist and see what happens..if the machine isnt too unstable ill keep it that way and wait for 2.6.12

hey it works..three times the speed...its now around

/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 1028 MB in 2.00 seconds = 512.80 MB/sec
HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(null) (wait for flush complete) failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
Timing buffered disk reads: 164 MB in 3.03 seconds = 54.04 MB/sec
HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(null) (wait for flush complete) failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device


i still cant enable dma, but who cares..the speed is fine..its up from 19 MB/s to 54 MB/s ..man...i can actually feel the difference..now just hoping this doesnt crash! thanks for the help!

ganja_guru I am glad it is solved.
I imagined you recompiled sata_sil.c, so you must be quite clued up
with Linux. How did you do that?
I am trying to recompile sata_sil.c using dkms, do you think
you could help with that? I have a post on this.

If you just edited sata_sil.c and recompiled the whole kernel,
well this is too much for me for now. I just want to recompile
only one module and dkms is the right tool for this.

Anyhow can you just highlight what you did, it will be usefull to other.

sorry im not aware what module dkms is..but ill explain what i did..

as root,

-cd /usr/src/linux
-make xconfig (or make gconfig, or make menuconfig)

1).Device Drivers-ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support-Support for SATA should be UNCHECKED(these are old depreceated drivers)

2). SCSI Device Support - SCSI low level support - SATA Support - Silicon Image(or whatever) should be checked...(note : life is a bit easier if you just select 'y' here instead of 'module')

save the new config and exit.


3) open the file /usr/src/linux-2.6.11/drivers/scsi/sata_sil.c in an editor.
4) you should find a segment which says :

} sil_blacklist [] = {
{ "ST320012AS", SIL_QUIRK_MOD15WRITE },
{ "ST330013AS", SIL_QUIRK_MOD15WRITE },
{ "ST340017AS", SIL_QUIRK_MOD15WRITE },
{ "ST360015AS", SIL_QUIRK_MOD15WRITE },
{ "ST380013AS", SIL_QUIRK_MOD15WRITE },
{ "ST380023AS", SIL_QUIRK_MOD15WRITE },
{ "ST3120023AS", SIL_QUIRK_MOD15WRITE },
{ "ST3160023AS", SIL_QUIRK_MOD15WRITE },
{ "ST3120026AS", SIL_QUIRK_MOD15WRITE },
{ "ST340014ASL", SIL_QUIRK_MOD15WRITE },
{ "ST360014ASL", SIL_QUIRK_MOD15WRITE },
{ "ST380011ASL", SIL_QUIRK_MOD15WRITE },
{ "ST3120022ASL", SIL_QUIRK_MOD15WRITE },
{ "ST3160021ASL", SIL_QUIRK_MOD15WRITE },
{ "Maxtor 4D060H3", SIL_QUIRK_UDMA5MAX },
{ }

find the appropriate drive and delete that particular line only..

now,
5)cd /usr/src/linux
6)make
7) make modules_install
8) rm -rf /boot/System.map
9) rm -rf /boot/vmlinuz
10) cp /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.11
11) cp /usr/src/linux/System.map /boot/System.map-2.6.11
12) ln -s /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.11 /boot/vmlinuz
13) ln -s /boot/System.map-2.6.11 /boot/System.map
14) make the changes to lilo if needed, and just run 'lilo'

(alternatively,just do a 'make install' after 'make modules_install'...but that never worked too well for me)


thats it..ive been running this for a day and a half now and its stable as ever..but there obviously is a reason why these drives are blacklisted so please do this at your own risk...

emmanuel_uk: sorry, but i dont see any comments on WD drives in sata_sil.c..

Thanks a lot. I see full kernel install. I have to try one day :-).
dkms is not a module but a utility that allows to compile/install
a single module on its own (that is my short definition, see
http://linux.dell.com/projects.shtml )

Re sata_sil.c what I want to change is a flag somewhere in it
to force it to try to detect UDMA133 and UDMA150.

I am pretty sure now that your drive works fine, that it is
set to UDMA100. This is ok, but rather low for a sata drive
(I mean not the best it can do in theory)

I strongly recommend do not delete a line when writing programs or editing a programs source code. Always comment out a line. Use either // or /* */.

Use Hitachi or Western Digital because they are much better brands than Maxtor and Seagate.

Emmanuel_uk, you are wrong on ATA100 being slower than SATA. No, hard drive can not overload a controller. The max raw speed that I have seen is around 50 megabytes. I would not force the kernel to push the drive to ATA-6.

Electro I stand corrected. Still keen on experiencing and learning,
and benchmarking this. That is my pet project.
Can I brake physically anything by going ATA-6 or just make
the system unstable?

[edit 08/06/05
I have forced my raid0 to udma 6, see
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=290393
as expected little improvement]

electro:thanks for the tip

im not really worried what UDMA mode my drive is set at, cause im getting the same average read speed as windows/other benchmarks online for my drive..so no worries there...